Note: Those who followed my previous blog may recognise this as an edited, re-worked version of something they read in late-2012.Further note: it contains plenty of f-bombs and even a c-bomb. I once got a message from someone who wanted to take me to task for having continually cherry-picked the bible, seeking out all of its ugly bits. “After all,” he (she?) said, and I quote, “you have to admit that the vast majority of the contents of the Bible is of love, forgiveness and justice”... Well. Here is an expanded version of my response. Consider it an open letter. And buckle in: it’s around 2000 words in length. (Not everything I post here will be!!)

There’s no doubt that anti-theists like me go picking out all the revolting aspects of the bible that we were never taught in Sunday school and that are never heard from the pulpit. We enjoy bringing them up. I wouldn’t really have any argument with your message, and would proudly plead guilty, except for your saying “you have to admit that the vast majority of the contents of the Bible is of love, forgiveness and justice”… I couldn’t agree less. The old testament, which is about 7/8 of the bible, is, by modern standards of ethics, horrendous. Its ethical precepts would be out of place in any but the most backwards, cruel, and barbaric of societies. By today’s legal and ethical standards, many, if not quantitatively most, of its heroes are war criminals that give any of the 20th century’s mass murderers a run for their money. It’s absolutely not about love and forgiveness, but retribution, anger, jealousy, and violent military conquest. Really, if you were judging the bible, without bias, on the balance of nice stuff to awful stuff, you could not come to any conclusion other than that it was a ghastly book filled with absolute horror.I just don’t see how apologists and defenders of the bible so casually brush off some of the awfulness that this book contains in its descriptions of people’s and its god’s actions. Really?; the god Yahweh striking thousands of babies dead for the sins of a nation’s king? How did the mothers of these babies feel, waking up to find a cold lifeless corpse in the cradle, as ‘payback’ for some King’s iniquities that neither they nor their dead child had had anything to do with? That’s astonishingly awful, and I don’t only think that because I’ve got an infant son of my own. I just don’t get how anyone could have a “fair enough” attitude to that. “Fair enough, I suppose. I love the character that did that.” Or drowning the entire world in a slow miserable death? This is no trivial affair, despite the happy-clappy songs we sang about it as kids in Sunday School. It is absolutely gut-wrenchingly awful. Have you seen the footage of the Japanese tsunami of 2011? Well, consider that the deluge in the Noah story was orders of magnitude more destructive, and deliberately dealt out, as punishment for moral ‘corruption’? For moral corruption? That’s like tying someone down and kicking their teeth out as punishment for their having been violent! Where on Earth does that get anyone? This is the example set by the supreme moral authority of the universe? Give me a fucking break. Your average seven-year-old kid knows that that’s not the way to go. Or how about when the Lord of Love asks David to choose between two or three horrible afflictions that He insists must be visited upon Israel? What sick shit is this? Imagine someone has tied up a loved one of yours, and you have to choose whether he kills her with a chainsaw, a scalpel, or a power-drill? Well, David had to choose between his nation dying from famine, certain defeat in war, or a decimating pestilence. He was apparently made to choose one. If you wanted to paint a picture of an unimaginably sick sadistic asshole, gloating over his ability to cause unbearable suffering both mentally and physically, you could do no better than to describe Yahweh’s role in this episode. And others like it. Yet it gets passed off as “holy”. People will tell me that it’s a representation of divine “justice”. I can’t really help but feel that I need to speak up in response to the way it gets brushed aside as not really relevant to or indicative of anything important when it comes to reflecting upon the character of this god. I also feel compelled to respond to the insult to my intelligence that’s inherent in anyone’s attempt to have me fall for the whole “justice” line. Of course, I think it’s fiction, so it would be crazy for me to be angry at Yahweh, who doesn’t really exist any more than Zeus, or Minerva, or Thoth. I do, however, find it worthwhile seeking out and pointing out these kinds of things in the bible, because I believe that the appalling morality of this book has been, and is, clouding the issues of ethics and morality in our society and world, up to today. It certainly clouds the better judgment of individuals. I see it often. As an atheist, I can utterly, utterly condemn the practice of throwing rocks at people until they die of the injuries caused. Same goes for the punishment of burning living people to death for ‘crimes’ involving consensual sex. Even if you support a death penalty, and even if you thought the ‘crimes’ were worthy of it, would ANY civilized society choose stoning or burning over, say, the electric chair or a lethal injection? Seriously? Rocks? We consider modern methods of execution ‘humane’ for good reason, given the alternatives presented and mandated by the apparent God of Love for his beloved creatures. Had Yahweh not heard of hanging, which is relatively quick in most cases? Did they not have rope? Did it absolutely have to be stoning? Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but generally speaking, a Christian believer, who believes that stoning and burning alive were once the favored punishments of all-loving, all-holy Yahweh, is to some extent compelled to defend those methods of execution as being less than obscene violations of justice, ethics, or morality. They have to defend them, or else, as they know, they’re in danger of admitting that their god, as presented in scripture, utterly violates their own most deeply-seated moral ideals in the most outrageous way. They are forced, like an abused wife, to not speak their truth, and instead defend the character whose character and actions they find so abhorrent, and figure that any different opinion they have to their oppressor must be indicative of some short-coming on their own part. I’ve tried the experiment often, asking believers on Youtube whether or not stoning someone is as bad as, say, committing adultery or stealing. Obfuscations abound. It’s astonishing, and I’m repeatedly amazed that such a thing could even come under question. The usual stoopid comeback of “Well you’re an atheist, so you don’t have any basis for your morality” only tells me that my question has hit pay-dirt.

What good is a basis of morality when it can’t guide you towards differentiating between the ‘evil’ of consensual sex outside of marriage, and that of roasting a fellow human being to death with fire? How can we have a sensible discussion in society about ethics and justice while this obfuscation is given a seat at the discussion?; much less the privileged status it gets due to it being couched in bullsh—— <I mean> religious mythology. If you obfuscate this way, what help are you to the women in the Islamic world who are, in this day and age, being stoned to death? You defend the punishment they’re experiencing as “holy”, give or take, depending on “context”. Non-believers don’t have to dance around the issue: it’s fucking barbaric in any context. You know it, but you just won’t say it because of your religion. Believer: listen to the voice of reason and fairness deep within you, heed it, and COME OUT AND SAY IT: Speak your truth: there isn’t ANY CONTEXT, NO CONTEXT WHATSOEVER, that justifies pelting a woman with rocks until she dies as a result of the injuries she sustains. NONE. IN ANY FUCKING CONTEXT. SAY IT. Any occasion of this at any time in human history, is a case of something inexcusably cruel being carried out. It really isn’t rocket science. The fact that stonings and burnings have been carried out, ever, is a testament to the human tendency towards psychopathy: not a testament to their being a supreme being who bestows upon us a perfect moral compass to follow and aspire to. That happens to mandate stonings and burnings IN ANY CONTEXT.“God is perfect love and perfect justice and perfect forgiveness, way beyond anything that a mere human could come up with, but yes, in the past, He just liked to see non-virgin brides murdered on their fathers’ doorsteps by mobs of angry men pelting her with rocks until her skull was smashed in or she died of massive internal bleeding”.Imagine witnessing the scene. Imagine the girl’s screams as those faithful men carried out ‘God’s will’. Imagine hearing them turn from screams to moans and pathetic whimpers as thud after thud of rock against flesh tells you that ‘justice’ is being served. What did the father of the bride, and the mother, think of Yahweh's perfect love, justice, and forgiveness, as they buried the violently bruised, blood-caked corpse of their teenage daughter? Do you think they thanked the gentlemen who had just delivered justice?

Have you ever seen how long a stoning takes to complete? I’ve only ever managed to get through two whole videos of stoning. The lead-up, which lasted more than ten minutes in one I watched, involves the gathering of the mob and usually the tying or burying waist-deep of the woman. Magic words are recited by a psychotic cunt in religious clothing while the mob hangs back. Then, at some prompt, they spring to life, taking up their rocks - it’s a disgusting organic swell all around her, 360 degrees, and whoosh, suddenly it’s raining down huge fucking stones on her cranium, and she can’t defend herself. Picture someone waist deep in the dirt, with arms tied, attempting to “escape”. She’s overwhelmed, concussed, battered, cut, smashed and stunned within a few seconds, and lives out the next ten to twenty minutes in agony, pathetically flailing about uselessly, no doubt wishing for death to take her out of her inexpressible misery. “Holy in some contexts”? You fucking monster.

Yes, I’ve had stonings and burnings defended by Christians time and time again, as having been ‘appropriate’ in their cultural context. Fuck religion for what it does to people. That was someone’s daughter they just threw fucking great stones at. And most likely because she engaged in a physical act of love. What is wrong with you, to omit to thoroughly condemn this transaction?

No, the central representation in the bible about the character of its god is NOT primarily about love and forgiveness and mercy. You have that about 180 degrees wrong. One may as well read Mein Kampf and come away claiming it is a book about equality, tolerance, and peaceful diplomacy.

You’re thinking about that addendum tagged onto the end, about the 1st-century hippy who espoused better, kinder, more humane ideas than killing each other in the cruelest ways imaginable. What a genius. But who then also threatened eternal torture in a scalding lake of fire to those who don’t dedicate themselves to him completely. Ughhh- this obsession with pain, violence, and torturous insanity is inescapable within Judeo-Christianity, even in the New Testament! Think about it - what is it that finally satiates God The Father’s anger over mankind’s sinful nature, after a few thousand years of ritual animal slaughtering not quite cutting it? Of course – an act of violent torture against…facepalm… Himself.

Absolutely insane.

And to think there are religions out there who have their adherents vow such things as “to not cause harm to any living being”. Imagine one of those religions had been picked up by the Roman Empire back in the day and had spread throughout the world. Wow, what a different world this would be.

So, to conclude: Why bring up these scriptural obscenities in videos about the most believed-in god in the world, ever? Because if stoning people and burning them alive can be excused in some ‘contexts’, ... then what on Earth can’t be? This book needs to be exposed as the polluting nonsense it is, and be utterly, completely done away with.

Title image: http://pixabay.com/en/stones-pebbles-about-steinig-plump-230856/

I'm glad you clarified that you're criticizing a character, not an actual entity. I've seen Christians ignore the point about whether the Bible god is good and simply criticize atheists for going after the evil of a non-existent god. However, if someone worshiped Darth Vader as a perfectly good and moral role model, I'd have to at least mention that he blew up Tatooine, or that he's generally cruel and not a good fellow. The fact that Tatooine never existed or that there was never a global flood is irrelevant if someone considers this being to be perfectly good. For the record, I think that Allah is tied with Yahweh for the title of "most evil sadistic monster in all of fiction". Not even Darth Vader comes close.

When it comes to evil commands, I think you picked a great example. Stoning is often glossed over without viscerally going into why it's evil, and stoning is mentioned A LOT in the Bible as the specific method of execution that "God" demands for various "crimes". (scare-quotes necessary)

To make things worse, the immoral commands often have precedence over the good ones, because the immoral commands are specific and the moral ones tend to be general. In the same way that the specific law "drinking and driving is illegal" overrides the general rule that "drinking is legal", the specific command "stone your daughter to death if she's not a virgin when she gets married" overrides "don't kill people" or "love your neighbor". Where's the specific command from Jesus that you should NOT kill anyone who isn't trying to kill you? "Though shalt not kill" is still OT, and too general to be any use. Don't kill in self defense, either? Don't bother having an army because they can't kill anyone? Obviously not, according to modern Christians, but these exceptions certainly don't come from the Bible.

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FrankO

3/19/2014 05:58:56 am

That last paragraph is just wonderful. Killing people is the most obviously reprehensible act humans ever condone (and no, zygotes are not people, pro-lifers). Bravo Flyborg, I've never seen a nail better hit on the head: and NonStampCollector's inspirational post inspired the blow. God-botherers, eat out your hearts. Your superstitions can't begin to cope with the real issues.

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FB Hunter

4/1/2014 03:50:32 am

It was Alderan, not Tantooine.

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uriel1972

3/18/2014 11:28:30 pm

Alderaan, not Tatooine, but I digress. The Divine Command model of morals falls down when you realise that if God commands it it must be not just moral but required, so if God commands rape and genocide it is not only moral but required.

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Mike

3/19/2014 01:05:40 am

You forget to mention that, in the case of the Pharaoh, it is mentioned after each plague that "And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses."

So not only were the Egyptian people innocent...it was Yahweh's OWN ACTIONS that prevented the Pharaoh from capitulating and led directly to those deaths....

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Martin Cohen

3/19/2014 08:55:44 am

Generally quite good, but I find your use of "cunt" objectionable.

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Pierre Masson

3/19/2014 09:46:14 am

Same here.

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NSC

3/19/2014 11:04:46 am

I can understand that. However, I just can't think of a label for them that's distasteful enough. I'll spare you the adjectival add-ons I've been coming up with since reading your comment.
I did put some thought into including that word vs. not, be assured it was a deliberate, considered inclusion.

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Lance

4/12/2014 10:56:47 am

I found your use of 'cunt' was spot on. It made me wince and smile all in one motion. So it was a moving literary device

Great piece.

Tone

3/21/2014 01:35:13 am

In NSC's defense we were warned at the outset.

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Sujan

3/23/2014 07:35:17 am

I find "cunt" here to be a succinct way to satisfyingly express the beginnings of my loathing of the said woman. And, as NSC indicates, can think of much much more to express about a woman who'd lead a mob into that scenario.

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NSC

3/23/2014 08:36:10 am

No, not a woman. A mob of the kind of men who'd do this are not going to take orders from a woman.

This is great. It kills me (not literally, obviously) when people say the Bible is their source of morality. No it isn't! You're a morally better person than Yahweh!

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eddy

3/19/2014 12:57:04 pm

' “Well you’re an atheist, so you don’t have any basis for your morality” '. That should be, "... you don't have any coercion underlying your morality."

It seems the only logic they have is, "It's OK if God does it or commands it.", or else it's like "You just don't get it." as rebellious kids might say to their parents.

"someone's daughter [being stoned]", and sometimes (in some countries) it seems the father or even the mother are on the side of the crowds, or at least they don't show any great objection, perhaps out of fear. So messed up.

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Kazeite

3/19/2014 08:26:12 pm

One could say that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world his name is God.

Great post. I will say I'm not convinced that the 1st-century hippy at the end ever actually espoused eternal torture (I personally think the idea of eternal torture in hell is based on some seriously bad translations and even worse interpretations), but the idea that anyone could read this and still defend the god of the Old Testament blows my mind.

This christian site gives an overview of the idea of hell from the bible: http://bible.org/article/what-bible-says-about-hell. Here are a few choice quotes:
– Matthew 25:46 “And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
– Mark 9:43 describes hell as “the fire that never shall be quenched”
According to the text, many of these descriptions come from JC himself.

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Luke

3/20/2014 02:07:33 am

Great post. expresses well one of the primary reasons I left Christianity.

But an important point you didn't bring up is that Yahweh could do all of the killing himself, and yet he commands humans to do it for him. Yahweh has his creatures stone their fellow being thus barbarizing them, when he could simply snuff them in their sleep and tell the community that he'll do that to anyone who commits adultery.

And this is what I always have to resort to when arguing about God's genocidal campaign against the Canaanites. I GRANT to the believer that God has the right to kill his creatures, but he doesn't have the right to command us to kill our fellow humans FOR him.

The Bible describes how God had an angel kill Sennacherib's army during the night, so God obviously has no trouble taking out people who are a problem for the Israelites. But apparently God can also command humans to break into the homes of defenseless women and their children and slaughter them with the sword.

Go fuck yourself, Yahweh. If you want these people killed, do it yourself.

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Pseudo Nym

7/10/2014 08:39:28 am

No, a hypothetical creator would not have the right to kill people. If I gave you a chair as a birthday present, I wouldn't have the right to then break into your house and steal the chair. The chair is yours now.

It occurs to me that the coming 'Armageddon' many apocalypticists gleefully await will not be as bad as their Noahic Cataclysm would have to have been had it actually occurred. It hurts to know that a large chunk of humanity can know - KNOW - what a faithless, backstabbing being they are worshipping, yet they can't rest until we've all agreed to do so or fucking died for refusing. If we had a friend that treated us like this YHWH prick treats his most faithful servants, fucking with them all the time to win bets, hardening the hearts of our enemies to prolong the clusterfuck when softening that one heart would have been an act of true benevolence... What hurts most to me is that they want this to be true. Not that they can bring themselves to believe it, I get that part. They actually want this being to exist, and all of humanity in utter subjugation to it.

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Alester Wilson

3/22/2014 12:28:17 pm

Did you get a response to this from original recipient? I can't imagine any thinking person even attempting to argue against such crisp and clear writing.

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NSC

3/22/2014 03:33:27 pm

I really don't remember. And I am cheating here, giving myself a few good re-writes and expansions of what was initially one or two 500-character-limited Youtube comments.
But the reason I posted this was because those sorts of comments continue to come in, and no doubt always will. Now I've got somewhere to point the next person without having to type it all up again.

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Joel

4/3/2014 05:53:11 am

This is a great piece of writing. It amazes me when apologists give an argument claiming that objective morals exist, although they are really appealing to mass subjective experience, then posit that they are directly from god, as if evidence of god's existence. However, if one reads the Bible, one should then expect congruency with subjective moral experience and god's nature if this 'evidence' is even to be considered reasonable, but just as you mentioned, punishment by burning, stoning, and even drowning people are morally reprehensible to most people, let alone punishing someone eternally for a finite amount of crime. Numbers 16 is a great example where god opened the ground up and swallowed a whole group of people which were directly sent to hell, physically and alive, under the earth. No trial or anything. Then he burned to death precisely 250 men offering incense by spewing fire from himself, but told Moses to send a man into the fire to save the incense holders because they were holy. Then the next day the Israelites basically call Moses an asshole for allowing all the deaths, which immediately angers god and he takes the form of a cloud and sends a plague onto them, but Moses is a clever lad and wears some incense and separates the living and the dead. He then stands between the two and stops the plague, because the incense atoned for their sins, thus appeasing god's wrath which had left 14,700 men dead. Still, apologists claim that congruency exists between subjective moral experience and gods nature and posit this as evidence that god exists.

Great summary, NSC. "The Bible is full of love and nice-nice" claim is one of the biggest crocks out there – and one of the easiest to shoot down in less time than it takes to say "God loves us all...."

But it's not easy to fully catalog the Bible's horrors, what with the sheer volume of its immoral dreck. There are plenty of great resources out there that take up the task; I like the Evil Bible and Dark Bible sites as great places to direct "Good Book" thumpers. Anyone who's not familiar with these, check 'em out!
http://www.evilbible.com
http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible3.htm

If I may thump my own meager addition, I made a condensed list of God's acts of "love" here:
http://www.defaithed.com/blog/2008/06/john-316-expanded-version

along with a similar list that adds scriptural references:
http://www.defaithed.com/listen-to-him

I don't understand all the complaints. To me it seems as if the movie is actually more Biblically accurate than movies in the past. The Bible doesn't say there were not rock monsters, but it does say there were giants... Who knows if they were made of rocks or not. (They were the product of human-angel crossbreeding so they could have looked like anything.) Also, the Bible doesn't describe what Adam and Eve looked like before the fall but since Jesus is described as glowing after he was resurrected we can assume that Adam and Eve would have been appeared similar until sin entered the world. - I know A LOT of Christians who swear it was a sin to eat meat before the flood, so it's not so strange that the "sinful" evil people would be portrayed as eating meat in a violent fashion. After all, these are supposed to be people so evil that it makes God want to kill all of them. (Think of how violently your kids would need to eat in order to make you want to drown them.)

It was a little strange that Noah thought his family would need to die with the rest of humanity, but he just saw God kill off literally everyone - I think he would be justified in thinking God would finish the job after he was done with Noah. They did leave in the drunken Noah, so they stayed true to the story there, but they didn't have him curse his son and all his future offspring into slavery for finding him naked - so they did exercise since literary license there.

I'm sorry, but the Noah story is one of the most ridiculous and unbelievable stories in the Bible. However, I do find it funny that most of the fantastical bits people are complaining about in the movie are actually where it stays closer to the biblical account and common interpretation.

Sorry. My phone fucked up. That comment was meant for the Noah post. I don't know how or why it added it here.

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Creatheist

10/20/2014 03:33:29 am

Very nice piece. I too have seen a few of the pointless execution videos. I need not see another. Religious barbarism is so inhumane! I have just recently escaped the christian cult of death (after 32 years of fundamentalism) - it was a difficult transition but my feet are now firmly on the ground of reason and I stand with you wholly. Thanks for your videos, blog and efforts! Take epic care of your family and good will to you! Thanks

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NonStampCollector

Youtube antitheistic video maker. See "info" section above for more of who I am.This blog is a place for me to write or present things that are too long for twitter, and not of a 'video' nature.Follow me on twitter (above) or sub to the RSS feed (below) to be notified of when I've put something up.Thanks for taking a look, feedback welcome.NSC.

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